Margin Notes from Charles Dickens' Teacher

 It was the best of times, it was the worst of times,

A nice beginning, Charles, but perhaps a little bit undecided? You want a good strong direction to your opening. Try to choose one or the other and build on it!

it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness

Please refer to my first remark!

It was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity,

Very nice, Charles, but when you read this to the class today, you pronounced "epoch" as "e-poach." The correct pronunciation rhymes with "luck." It was wonderful, though, to see you come out of your shell! :-)

it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness

Unless you are referring to titles or proper names, capitals are not needed here. 

it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair

Don't forget that setting is crucial, Charles. What season is it? Do not confuse your reader!

we had everything before us, we had nothing before us

Charles... I can see that you're trying very hard on this assignment. Good for you! However, and once again, you want to be more definite here!

We were all going direct to Heaven,

Oh Charles. Religion is such a touchy subject and in class we want always to be as inclusive as possible. How about "direct to Des Moines" instead?

we were all going direct the other way--

Good, Charles, good! Everyone loves a travel story!

in short, the period was so far like the present period

We'll cover punctuation next week-- periods, commas and so forth. Just stay with your narrative--you can always go back and edit these things later, after we've covered that material. 

that some of its noisiest authorities insist on being received, for good or for evil,

Never let your writing lapse into moral ambiguity, Charles. While it's true that the AP English class will be studying "Les Miserables", here we want to stick to basics. Remember, you can't be The Polar Express until you've mastered being The Little Engine That Could! 

in the superlative degree of comparison only. 

This last sentence seems muddled to me, Charles. Did you mean "degree" as an indicator of the season, as brought up in your earlier line?  Moreover, all comparisons should best be accomplished by means of simile and metaphor, not by flat statement. 

Charles, don't be discouraged. We all err! You've made a fine beginning here, and with work and patience (and listening in class instead of drawing stick figure soldiers doing battle on the side of the page!) I believe that you can achieve a mastery of basic writing skills! Keep at it. I very much look forward to helping you to learn and improve as the school year continues! 

C+

_____________

for Diving Into Margins over at Dverse, with Queen Cool Dora.

Music: 10,000 Maniacs You Happy Puppet

 

Despite, and Still (for J.)

 

I said to the trees

                                                --the birch, the pear, the maple--

"How can my heart be anything but an empty cup

Now that your leaves have all fallen

   like the handsome musician from Heaven

   or funeral cards from the hands of old women?"

"Look at you," replied the trees. 

                                                                                     "We have spun you

from the loom of our beauty and the cruelty of our silence.

Just as you did in summer, you stand looking

   as Jason did in the grove, when our fleece was 

   golden in autumn and stolen away in November."

I stayed for a long time,

                                                               so long that the snow 

became hands on my shoulders like a mother's or a healer's.

The sky is as gray as cold water, the trees' bones

  stand right to left like verses across a page,

   antique, dignified, turned to benevolent mentors.

_____________________________

for Dverse Poetics "Despite & Still" where Dora is hosting.

Music: Fleetwood Mac Bare Trees

And Judith Durham All My Trials

Donostia

 

Teacher says that every time a bell rings

she is awakened in the night and lies there

remembering the bay at San Sebastian.

The stars in the sky there are local,

drifting up from modest houses in Loiola.

They are as close as cats on a sill

and are able to both warm and wound.

Teacher says that when her heart beats,

she cannot sleep, recalling the day of drums--

the Tamborrada, and the clouds that gathered

in search of their pilfered thunder.

During the Aste Nagusia, or Big Week.

La Concha Bay is home to stilt walkers wearing

huge papier mâché heads. The calm waters

are like mothers who knew these giants as babies.

Teacher says that there was a man there,

or a woman, or an enchantment she cannot describe.

Perhaps all three, a trinity born of sangria, celebration,

and one bell beneath the drumbeat, a ringing bird.

On these recent nights, far from the Basque country,

she is startled by her doppelganger lying awake beside her.

The lesson she cannot teach is that neither knew of the other,

though the invitation was always there, a tongue in the bell,

Like an arrow in the flesh of a saint or an invitation 

to La Concha Bay, and the days to be lived beyond it.

_________

for Word Garden Word List--The Book of the Dead. 

 

Music: Mary Hopkin Those Were the Days

 

Trout Fishing In America

 

Left Michigan that June

with two teacher friends.

Saw Looking For Mr. Goodbar

in South Bend.

No wonder the country's going to hell.

All the teachers are cruising the bars!

In a Jackson Mississippi Mickey D's

there were elephants on the wall for art.

They're real, said Jim. No, said I.

Jim's grin. In my world, they are.

Crossing a bridge into Louisiana

we saw white cranes circling the marshlands.

The entire Richard Brautigan library across the back seat;

on the tape machine, Jackson Browne & friends.

It was just something to do that summer,

passing the bottle to pass the time.

But now, with all the black coffee blur behind me,

that year still goes down smooth, holds a shine.

~~~~~~~~~

for Sunday Muse #176.

Dharma Baby

With milk stirred into my tomato soup, I was wild as a landscaped yard,
worldly as a tabby kitten.
Still, venomous lies thorned my pulse with the odd fist thrown in for punctuation.

Staying corner-quiet as the vacuum slammed the baseboards a room away,
I searched for a kind of touch on the bottom book shelves.
As soon as I could, I went feral, a lonesome library hider ghosting the book store, on my way to a gifting high of pages and substances,
a bad apple for a sick teacher.

Kerouac and other people's cars, coolers of beer,
paperbacks on the back seat, center lines snaking by,
these were my caduceus and my catechism.
I ate Vonnegut,
drank Brautigan,
shot up Burroughs,
fucked Ferlinghetti but not my road companions.

My boozy keepers kept me from a thousand mistakes.
Off all summer from their classrooms, 
they had no wives to explain shit to, 
just me in the hungover mornings, useless and funny as a three-legged cat.

I almost died.
Wrote some tripe in blood and got it published.
Joined a book club and the human race,
married wrong, raised a child,
kept my books like holy relics, poetry bones on which I learned to stand and stumble and survive.

I built a new heart out of sentences,
slept with other women,
changed my name, went too far but did it sober.
"Why do you keep these old books?"
Because they are life rafts,
holy texts,
soul food,
lovers who never leave.
They are me and I am them, a bad crowd lit with halos.

You can go if you want,
I am beyond injury anymore.
The nurses here make bedding from chapbooks,
whisper soft as pages turning,
are immortal,
and know my name.

4/18/2020
________________

for the Sunday Muse #104 where I am hosting.

The World According To Madame Zygansky

Madame Zygansky put ideas in our heads--
that much is true.

But to say that she turned us into what we became,
is to say that one woman can feather the crows,
toss them into the sky,
and turn day into night, like a parlor trick.

Investigators,
keen-eyed sirs,
wearing ties that your wives switched out this morning
in replacement of your own unfortunate choices--
question us,
fall in love with us,
betray those wives.

Solve nothing.

We were girls born as a lesson in biology,
mailed by our mothers to Madame Zygansky's doorstep,
aeropost, naturally.

Arriving as witless nightjars, we underwent a lustration
inside our tiny birdskulls.
Madame Zygansky sent books into our brains like secret police,
and music through us to denounce the gray futures
escaped with every second spent under her tutelage.

Dance with us, detectives.
If you keep your little notepads tucked between your palms and ours,
you may still be able to keep our faces--
and the sound of wing beats--
out of your dreams tonight.
Otherwise, in the morning, you will have to report and jail yourselves,
fondling the bombs we gave you as the trains take you away.

Madame Zygansky put ideas into our heads,
cobalt blue on ivory white, with a few flecks of black.

If she turned us into what we became, we bless her for it--
Only a Gypsy knows how to feather the crows
and toss them into the sky,
her flock alive and aloft, with all directions open.
_______

for Kerry's mini-challenge, and dedicated to teachers everywhere.
 

 

Celestial Seasonings

On my coffee mug,
girl & dog.

I saw myself in her,
years ago,
when I was a woman fallen overboard,
sinking.

I was a ball of string
unwinding right down to the speechless bone.

I shall be this girl, I decided, not thinking it was anything more than a wish.
I shall have a border collie like this one, too,
named Bosco, because...well, because of a certainty I could not have explained.
He will be mine alone,
unlike my spouse,
unlike my child,
unlike anything I do or say or move through, now.

When the one who would soon enough trade me for madness asked,
"What are you thinking?",
I said, "I am thinking I will grow my hair long."

Girl & dog on my mug have faded;
alone among them all, this one has lost its paint,
and gone faint.

The company stopped making the tea it came with,
and I have gone back to coffee, and my own skin.

Look at me, long-haired, though it is going to silver;
look at me alone, back to being the poet,
and look at the black and white friend at my feet.

I made my life from a five dollar mug.
It's gone to white while I am a vivid red,
waved in front of the world like a dare.
________

 

The World's Greatest Lover

The World's Greatest Lover was holding forth at the bar,
with a woman poured over his arm on each side
like swooning raincoats.

He had pretty boys pouting near the potted palms,
and they rolled dice to see who would get
his cuff links and his legendary cock.

So softly that he had to ask me to repeat myself,
I said that he was nothing but a mouthy, well-dressed fraud
and that he knew nothing at all about love.

"Little seal with the red ball on your nose," he said, smiling benignly,
"keep clapping. I like it."

I introduced him to my acquaintance--
a not particularly pretty girl wearing carnival vendor jewelry.
In her bag she carried nothing but a paperback,
twenty dollars,
and her phone, which played "Beat It" when it rang.

A year later, I saw him again,
and he looked like hammered shit.
He stared right through things with a slightly stunned expression,
and did this nervous thing with his jaw,
but blessedly, he had stopped talking altogether.

I walked up to him.
It was easy; he was alone.

I said, poor sad little seal,
I see she taught you well.
_________

for Susan's challenge at Real Toads, which asked for a poem about love. I used one of the illustrations provided.